Nick R. Martin

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Nick Martin is an associate editor at TPM in New York City. He came to the site in 2011 as a reporter for TPMMuckraker. Previously, he worked in Arizona, first as a staff reporter for a local newspaper and later as a freelance journalist. He also ran the news blog Heat City. Contact him at nick@talkingpointsmemo.com

Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor, is expected to return to federal prison by 2 p.m. Tuesday to serve out a sentence for fraud and bribery.

Siegelman was sentenced last month to six and a half years in prison after a jury convicted him of trading $500,000 for a state board appointment. The Guardian reported the ex-governor traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. last week to try to lobby for a presidential pardon.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has returned home to Washington, D.C., after spending weeks at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota receiving treatment for bipolar disorder, one of his aides confirmed to TPM on Friday.

Before he was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Justice Department on Friday, Sheriff Joe Arpaio liked to dismiss the investigation into him and his office as little more than a partisan witch hunt. But the very documents announcing the end of the probe undercut the sheriff's claims.

Arpaio has long argued that the probe began shortly after President Obama took office and was nothing more than a powerful Democrat targeting a lowly Republican sheriff. He waved off reports, like one in the Arizona Republic, that pieced together interviews and documents showing the investigation likely began in 2008 under the Republican administration of George W. Bush.

Bain Capital, the company co-founded by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is reportedly among several private equity firms being investigated by the New York attorney general.

According to a story published on Saturday on the New York Times’ website, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) sent subpoenas to six firms in recent weeks to determine whether they improperly managed to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from their tax bills. Romney helped found Bain Capital in 1984 but left the company before becoming governor of Massachusetts in 2002.

Federal authorities announced late Friday they were dropping the four-year criminal investigation into Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio and would not be pressing abuse of power charges against him.

The announcement came just ahead of a long holiday weekend. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona disclosed the decision to the public through a three-sentence press release. An auto-response email from the office's spokesman said no one would answer questions about the decision. An outgoing message on the his cell phone said the same.

Arpaio was scheduled to hold a news conference later in the evening after returning from Tampa, Fla., where he attended the Republican National Convention this week. His Twitter account posted a message celebrating the victory. It said he "got great news getting off plane, Fed's 3 year (sic) case against my office closed. No abuse of power."

Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu was cleared of criminal wrongdoing on Friday in a case involving threats he allegedly made against an ex-boyfriend to keep their relationship a secret.

An immigration hawk in a border state, Babeu until recently was a rising star in the Republican Party. He was the Arizona co-chair of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and had launched a run for Congress this year.

Immigration hardliner Russell Pearce's burning desire to return to office in Arizona got doused with cold water on Tuesday night when he lost the Republican primary for state Senate to a moderate businessman who took a softer tone on immigration.

It was the second time in less than a year that Pearce, a tea party favorite who was once one of the most powerful politicians in Arizona, was put to bed by a moderate and it marked the end of a disastrous attempt to regain his standing in state politics.

Gabriela Saucedo Mercer hasn't even won the Republican primary for Congress in Arizona yet, but she is already facing attacks from the Democratic Congressman she is hoping to unseat in November over some incendiary comments she made in the past about Middle Eastern immigrants.

In an interview with a conservative website last year, Saucedo Mercer talked in depth about her views on immigration. A Mexican immigrant herself who became a U.S. citizen, she said the issue was important because people from places other than Mexico were among those coming across the border illegally.